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Driver’s Education, US Navy Edition
There was very little mainstream media coverage but the United States Navy proved again this week that no matter the size of the ocean, they will take a ship and hit something with it. This time, it was another one of our ships.
On Tuesday the USS Leyte Gulf (CG-55), a guided-missle cruiser and the USNS Robert E. Peary (T-AKE-5), a supply ship, collided during a training exercise off the coast of Florida. No one was injured. The Peary came away with an 8-inch gash above its waterline. The two ships were practicing an “underway replenishment” in which supplies are passed from ship to ship via rigging traveling together at speed.
The Leyte Gulf is currently assigned to carrier group of the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72).
Hat tip to the US Naval Institute News.
Published in Military
This was no boating accident.
Truthfully, this sounds less egregious than most of the other incidents. At least this time they were performing some special duty, which has some difficulty (hence the need for practice). They weren’t just trying to make it out of port, and crashing because of a disfunctional command crew.
Very troubling. I’m thankful that in this case, no one was injured, or worse. Apparently, the two ships were practicing a “replenishment at sea,” off the southeastern coast, which sounds as if it requires them to be close together, but not, one would suppose, for one to steer into the other. Nevertheless, the report says, their “sterns touched.”
It does put me in mind of the apocryphal (although if you live where I do, you really want it to be true) story about how Ohio drivers are the worst in the country, dating all the way back to the time, in nineteen-aught-something that the only two cars in the state drove into each other, because neither would yield the right-of-way. It was (allegedly) the first fatal car accident in the country.
My own personal observations lead me to believe that the intersectional indicators of bad driving/steering may occasionally involve geographic location (in Canada, it’s Ontario, I’m quite sure about that), but that the root cause of such poor driving/steering is almost always men wearing hats.
Perhaps that explains the Navy.
Update: I rest my case re: the hat-wearing road peril on the roads. I first floated this theory myself in the late 70s.
Paul Harvey once did a “Rest of the Story” on the crash of the first two cars in St. Louis.
The Navy’s manual for these kinds of replenishments is online. One source, which I could not verify, stated that the ships are supposed to stay 150 feet apart. Perhaps our Navy brethren can illuminate things.
My own pet hypothesis is that the jurisdictions with the best-designed road and traffic systems will produce the worst drivers, because they get used to the roads doing the work for them.
For example, in my town nearly every intersection has copious turning lanes, which is really nice. However, over time, drivers tend to lose the habit of always using one’s turn signals because if you’re already in the turning lane you don’t really need to signal that you’re turning.
I dunno if this hypothesis can be applied to the US Navy. Maybe US sailors get too accustomed to letting computers do most of the work?
That’s assuming that the US Navy has a worse collision rate than other navies. Are there comparative statistics available?
Well, there’s the US Navy’s problem. It gets its information from the Internet!
If memory serves correctly, we were usually about 120′ – 130′ apart (by measurement markers on a line tautly held between the two ships) during our many, many underway replenishments in the South China Sea. The two ships have to be moving fast enough for each to maintain steerage, and it seems to me that was between 15 and 19 knots (entirely subjective estimate). My observations were made from the fo’cstle of a Destroyer Escort.
To EJ…Unreps are a true test of seamanship. 150 feet sounds like a long way until you are in a 10,000 ton ship traveling at 20+ miles an hour. Momentum is a thing and 10,000 tons has a LOT of momentum, and the sea (wave action, wind, wake, etc) has a vote too, so 150 feet becomes a very short distance. Very.
I know a couple of years ago the USNA stopped teaching celestial navigation because it was thought to be antiquated in the computer age. When China started to develop anti satellite space launch capabilities they totally rethought that.
What’s the point of underway replenishment?
Is it that a ship in motion can begin evasion maneuvers quicker if enemies interrupt the resupply process? Couldn’t replenishment be accomplished quicker and more safely by anchoring, thereby evening out the risk of interruption?
Or is the idea that gaining a little travel time is worth the risks and complications?
The most dangerous activity surface ships can engage in, other than war.
I’m not a skimmer, but my understanding is most UNREP is for refueling, something our non-nuclear surface ships must do, and do often. Only carriers are nuclear powered now, and it’s a shame . . .
Oy vey! and Wut the…?!
It depends upon the scene of action. It may be several days steaming from a suitable anchorage and a combat ship cannot be spared that time when ammunition, food and fuel have been expended. Also mail and movies, although probably not so much these days.
In short, it greatly extends the range over which a ship can effectively operate.
There is also the fact that most of these ships are going to be part of a larger formation, a carrier group or the like. Don’t want to stop the whole thing because the Smedley is running on fumes.
Heck, they even stopped generally teaching Morse Code for a while.
Some here seem to think that steering a large ship is the same as steering an automobile. I have news for those who entertain this idea. It isn’t so!
Generally speaking, military service is a hazardous occupation. Get used to it.
One thing I do know is that cars don’t move when parked. Ships and sea, even anchored, do, and they get blown and heaved around, and at different speeds over the water. You have to maintain steerage way to keep control of where your ship is.
Of course it’s not. But with numerous collisions in the Pacific Fleet over the last three years each incident creates more questions about how the Navy is going about its work.
You haven’t seen how I steer an automobile.
How well do you steer in reverse? At speed. In a narrow alley.
Compared to whom? How many other navies cover the same sort of distances with the same number of ships in each group?
Or, do you mean that the number of collisions has increased in the past three years compared to previous three-year periods? If so, has there been an increase in traffic over those three years? If you increase traffic it stands to reason there’d be more collisions.
Are there statistics out there for the number of collisions per total nautical miles travelled? Can we see if that statistic has been trending upwards in recent years?
Presuming that you have no follow-up questions, I’m awesome at it.
Ever since that tragic accident, we Ohioans always yield the right-of-way. The good news is that, even if you’ve lived on the East Coast, and in Chicago, you eventually get the hang of it. If you’ve lived in Boston or LA, however, it’s generally best just to move back. You’ll eventually get another promotion.
I once sat at an Ohio four-way stop sign long enough that, by the time I got through it (my foot had fallen asleep, and it slipped off the brake pedal) a dashboard light had come on saying the vehicle was due for a change in automatic transmission fluid.
To make a left turn, you have to wait (15 feet before the intersection, lest someone think you are a pushy New Yorker) until (a) you are the first car in line in the turning lane (b) the light is green, and (c) visibility is 3 nautical miles or greater and no other automobiles can be seen approaching from over the horizon in any direction. If there is a parked car in view, proceed with caution.
If the green light is NOT a green LEFT TURN arrow, it’s even worse.
I keep a thermal blanket handy in the back seat, because sometimes it’s best just to turn in for the night and see how things look in the morning.
The pace of life slows down once you move here. You start to see things, beautiful things, little things like a wildflower poking its little head up through a crack in the pavement…things you would miss if you were driving in a rush to get somewhere in a hectic, money-crazy state like New Jersey or California or even Arkansas. Things you would miss even if you were walking, very slowly.
No, just emphasizing that a ship steers by swinging at the behinder end, like a car in reverse.
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but that the root cause of such poor driving/steering is almost always women holding iPhones.
Yes, steering with the front wheels swings the front of the car in the direction you want to go, and also turns the rear wheels in the new direction you want to go. Steering with the rear wheels swings the back of the car in the direction you don’t want to do. When you’re too close to the wall, steering away from it actually brings the rear wheels closer to it for a bit, and the harder you turn the wheel, the closer they get.
Ah, the Smedley, SergeantMajorJiggs’ favorite way to travel internationally. (Named for his Commandant, I believe.)
The Navy has seen an uptick in accidents, both at sea and in the air, since sequestration in 2013. Some of it is pushing equipment to failure because of the lack of spare parts, some of it is the loss of experienced mid level NCOs.
Same with the Army and land navigation by compass, instead of GPS. From a year ago:
This followed a 2017 assessment of vulnerabilities: